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Editorial

Misguided attack

Democratic leaders wrong to back effort to harm hospitality industry

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It’s hard to believe, but a former Ohio Democratic governor and a sitting Ohio Democratic state
legislator are associated with a campaign that seeks to harm the livelihoods of middle-class
Ohioans.

State Rep. Kathleen Clyde, D-Kent, and the Center for American Progress — for which former Gov.
Ted Strickland serves as counselor and president of its activist affiliate fund — locked arms with
a national women’s-rights group to disparage the Buckeye state.

The women’s group UltraViolet is paying for billboards that target visitors at airports in
Columbus, Cleveland and Dayton and paint Ohio as discriminatory.

UltraViolet admits that the billboards are intended to hurt the state by prompting people to
spend their travel dollars elsewhere. Ohioans have worked hard to build a $36 billion-a-year
visitor industry, which generates about $8 billion a year in central Ohio. The Ohio Democratic
Party has made a mantra of its concern for the middle class, but apparently this doesn’t extend to
the thousands of middle-class Ohioans who make their living in the travel and hospitality
industry.

It’s disingenuous to claim a mission to help women, but then attack an industry that allows
women to support their families and, in Columbus, raises money for social services through the bed
tax.

Even more bizarre, these billboards target cities with Democratic mayors. In Columbus, the ad
comes as Mayor Michael B. Coleman tries to woo the Democratic National Convention.

Further, the ads’ claims are misleading.

They say Ohio women are paid 77 cents to every $1 a man earns. In truth, the pay gap narrows to
a few cents when all circumstances are held equal, including choice of profession and marital and
parental decisions.

By the way, President Barack Obama in April cited the 77-cents figure as the national average.
So even if it were true, Ohio would be no worse than average.

The ads spank unnamed Buckeye politicians who opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It’s
fair enough to criticize this opposition, but since the act passed in 2009 and is now law, to
punish Ohio’s travel-industry workers isn’t a prod to action, it’s vindictive.

The organizers complain that “Ohio doesn’t guarantee any paid maternity or sick leave.” Never
mind that it was Strickland, as governor in 2008, who opposed and got pulled from the ballot the
Ohio Healthy Families Act, which would have required employers to provide paid sick days. He noted
the initiative “would be detrimental to Ohio’s economy” and might paint the state as “unfriendly to
business and economic development.”

Finally, they blame “Ohio’s new abortion ban” for closing clinics. There is no abortion ban in
Ohio.

In sum, these billboards seek to punish middle-class Ohioans and their families for the actions
of politicians they might not even have voted for.

As Julie Wagner Feasel, vice president for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, said: “This is nothing
more than a misguided effort to use Ohio’s hospitality industry as leverage in order to advance a
litany of job-killing public-policy ideas.

“And it’s especially shameful that Rep. Kathleen Clyde would directly participate in such an
effort. We would hope that former Gov. Ted Strickland ... would himself call for an immediate stop
to this attack on the great state of Ohio.”